


Hung From The Tree

by Gryphonrhi



Category: Captain America, Norse Mythology
Genre: Eddas, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where the Tesseract flung Red Skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hung From The Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spook_Me 2012; I think Red Skull counts as a mad scientist.

Red he hangs on the tree  
Suspended, head down,  
Screaming at first.  
Impaled, his legs,  
When he fell, bright-glowing.

Triumphant, thought he,  
Would be serum o'er sap-vines.  
Mighty his strength,  
Mortal his musings,  
Unworthy his veins of that which he stole.

Red is his skin,  
Black are his eyes,  
Pink the tongue shrieking unseemly words.

Knows he that he lives  
On sufferance and serum?  
No Super-Solider he, nor friend of the World Tree.

Sent, yes, but sent to what?  
To freedom?  
To glory?  
To power?

To hang, head-down,  
Much with blood streaked,  
Never thirst slaked by water or blood.

Thus his first day on the tree.

Red he hangs still,  
Suspended, slow-swaying,  
Spinning and turning in narrowing gyre.

Vacant he is.  
Around him he sees,  
But his mind does not think,  
Else he would know this place where he fell.

Red his skin, red his hands, red his thoughts.  
Blue his foot where the vines grasp and grip.

Brown the leaves to trunkward,  
Gold the leaves to tipward,  
Green still the leaves farther out the bough  
'Til time or the tree turn leaves back to buds...  
Or on to brown again.

Fruit and nuts, leaves and buds it bears along the one branch.  
Slowly, he begins to see.

A squirrel travels the trunk, up to the tip,  
Down to the roots,  
Chittering its gossip as it goes.  
Watching him, it stops,  
Eats a nut -- hits him with the cap.

Down come the ravens,  
Spiraling the pair,  
Stabbing and pecking,  
There to draw blood.  
Flesh drawn, they fly,  
And he swings again:  
Still screaming.

Red Skull curses, tries to catch  
Water on his tongue --  
Fails.

Women laugh below --  
Perilous the sound.  
Even Red Skull begins to grasp  
Where he is and who they are.

Still he thinks that he can win.

Fool.

Black the bark of the tree,  
Empty as space.  
Gleams there the stars,  
Shimmers the dust between worlds.  
Some of the fruit swings speckled with stars,  
Sways wide of his hands.

In the roots water pools:  
Star-filled, star-strewn, star-lit.  
Useful are double reflections,  
If yet you know  
How to collect and how to control,  
And who will pay dearly for such.

Thus his first night on the tree.

Johann Schmidt he was called,  
Mad he was made.  
Roter Schädel say the Wielders of Fate.  
(Beginning, Becoming, and Debt are they named,  
And the first two created the last.  
Argue not.)

Eternity or eon hung the Skull there,  
Dangled from the tree,  
Knew nothing of time.

First he gave orders to none.  
Then he screamed  
As the tree bound him more securely.  
In pride and folly thought he to tear at it. 

Serum or no,  
Life and the world are not so easily mastered.  
And this tree is both.

Bound him it did  
In branches and windings,  
In leaf and in sap,  
In light, fruit and spell.

Moaned he in the swinging.  
His blood pooling,  
His senses fooling --  
Nothing ruling him. 

So he thought.

In truth, he's right.

Fate's Mistresses laugh.

He sees, but does not see,  
Too angry to think  
And then too mad.

Sought he to master the unmasterable,  
The Cube of great power,  
The ever-unfolding Tesseract which holds much within itself:  
Not everything, but threads to everything.  
No mastery of it shall there be but only sailing  
And surfing  
And shaping of its curves and one's own desires.

To master it,  
One masters oneself  
And then leans, gently but firmly,  
Until the curl of events shapes rightly.

Unmastered is Red Skull  
By any,  
Even self.

Unmastered the Cube,  
And unmastered,  
Unmaking.  
Sends him to find wisdom --  
Or failing that,  
Fall.

Odin he is not,  
Nor nine days on the tree.  
No Allfather to make the sacrifice of an eye --  
The right eye.

Hangs the Skull there,  
Unaware  
That eyes he has three.  
Two to see the world  
And one to view what shapes the world  
And the world's true shapes.

Third eye has never opened for him  
And thus may not be offered.

Instead, he pays in what he thinks he has.  
Small price for small repayment  
But he knows nothing of fair dealing  
Nor of unfair deals to him.

Not for him wisdom.  
Not for him vision.  
Not for him bargains, for fair or for ill.

Pays he in madness --  
Drinks it like water, like dew  
That drops not in his mouth.  
Pays he in blood that drips down to the roots.

Knows him, Yggdrasil does then.

Knows him  
And drops him,  
Screaming,  
From the Tree.

Falls he again,  
The Red Skull unmade.

Red still his skull,  
His skin,  
His blood,  
Flayed by the bark.  
White his bones  
Among the red,  
And his teeth,  
And the edges of his mind.  
White with all colors, whirling  
And spinning  
And hiding his madness in fog.

Black his mind,  
Black his mood,  
Black his bruises.  
Black the skies around him  
As through them he falls.

Falls he,  
No wiser,  
No wider.  
(Much thinner, indeed,  
From unmeasured time,  
Unfed and unslaked,  
On the Tree.)

No faster falls he  
Than the Trickster,  
The Lie-Smith,  
The Last Fallen.

Falls to land elsewhere  
Than tumbled Lord Loki  
By someOne's kindness --  
Or for the Fates' jest.

Behind Thunderer's wake falls he.  
Fails he,  
And falls he,  
And sinks 'neath the waves.

Late the Skull lands  
But over water he hung,  
And over water returns  
Like his nemesis  
To freeze  
And to wait --  
Even, to thaw.

Elsewhere, elsewhen:  
Watching and knowing,  
Weaving and shaping --  
Laughing, the Norns.

**Author's Note:**

> Really. I've got nothing. Inspired by the eddas, but where in hell (or Hel) I came up with this one, I don't know.


End file.
